Why should we trust the council of Nicea in regards to the "authorized" version of the Bible? How can man decide what the truth of God is and is not?
Council of Nicea
- Thread starter Diakoneo10
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As you say this, what do you know about how the canon was determined?
For instance do you know the role played by the Marcion heresy 150 years prior to the Council of Nicea?
And what do you believe about the action and role of the Holy Spirit in determining "what the truth of God is and is not?"
I ask these questions to determine where actually to start the conversation.
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That's a myth. Nicea didn't set the canon. Nicea was about the Trinity.
The canon developed informally over several centuries, though the 4 Gospels and the letters of Paul were considered canonical as far back as we know, so the debates were over one or two minor books.
The canon developed informally over several centuries, though the 4 Gospels and the letters of Paul were considered canonical as far back as we know, so the debates were over one or two minor books.
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Nicea was about a number of things set forth by Constantine to be "settled" (one of Constantine's first moves to make the Church "catholic").
The canon was one of those things, but you are very much correct in that by the time of the council, the pertinent scriptures had been determined by usage and there was very little debate necessary. The Church leaders had been taking the matter seriously since the Marcion situation, so had 150 years to get it sorted out before Constantine convened the Council.
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Could you find me a real citation for Nicea and the canon? I believe this is a myth. Wikipedia and many other sources say that Nicea did not involve the canon.
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RDKirk- thanks for the reply.
I have a collegiate minor in Christian Theology and consider myself fairly well versed in Christian history from a Protestant standpoint. (Above the average churchgoer but by no means an expert) Right now the heresy you mentioned isn't ringing a bell but it might after a brief explanation- I may just not recognize the name given.
In answer to your Holy Spirit question- I believe that inspiration is personal. That God will lead us to revelations through various means according to each individual. Hope that makes sense. I could go into more examples but it would lead to other debates coming up and I want to stay focused on the canonization or dismissal of texts.
I have a collegiate minor in Christian Theology and consider myself fairly well versed in Christian history from a Protestant standpoint. (Above the average churchgoer but by no means an expert) Right now the heresy you mentioned isn't ringing a bell but it might after a brief explanation- I may just not recognize the name given.
In answer to your Holy Spirit question- I believe that inspiration is personal. That God will lead us to revelations through various means according to each individual. Hope that makes sense. I could go into more examples but it would lead to other debates coming up and I want to stay focused on the canonization or dismissal of texts.
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Hedrick- Nicea certainly involved the canon among other issues. I don't have time to find peer-reviewed sources right now but it is a matter of universal education. I have never, in years of class, under multiple directions, heard anything other than these facts taught.
And Wikipedia is certainly not a reliable source to base your ideas on.
And Wikipedia is certainly not a reliable source to base your ideas on.
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Knee V
It's phonetic.
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Hedrick is correct - Nicea did not address the matter of the canon of Scripture. It addressed Arianism and the Trinity, as well as a number of other issues relating to the administration of Church affairs. The canon of Scripture, however, was not one of those issues.
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ViaCrucis
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Actually, to even say that it dealt with the Trinity would be a misnomer.
The council specifically set out to deal with the Christological questions raised by Arius, namely over whether the Son was homousian, homoiusian, or heterousian with the Father. With the council declaring the Son homousian with the Father, and therefore "God of God" "begotten, not made", etc.
The Trinity itself wasn't the issue, it was the relationship of the Son with the Father.
And like all councils, before and since, it also set down a number of canons, such as that bishops shouldn't live with unmarried women with which they have no blood relation with.
Apart from these, it chose to favor the majority position on the calculation of Pascha at a time when the Quartodeciman position was already all but dead; thus establishing a universal method of calculating the Paschal Feast.
Having said all that, only for the sake of being very nitpicky, the question of the Biblical Canon didn't even come up during the gathering at Nicea. No mention can be found in the official documents, and as such is an old wife's tail without credibility.
There were councils that did talk about the Canon, there was a regional council in Carthage, and another in Laodicea, both within the 4th century. But these were regional synods, not ecumenical and thus not universally binding. Besides, these hardly settled the issue, as canonicity continued to be an open question for centuries after; as can be seen by looking at 4th and 5th century biblical codices such as Sinaiticus, or looking at the continued controversy over the Apocalypse of St. John that was still going on in the 7th century, or even seeing that when John Wycliffe in the 14th century translating the Vulgate into English retained the spurious Epistle to the Laodiceans in his translation as it was in the Vulgate at the time.
The one that should be clear is this: Even if Nicea did say anything about the Biblical Canon, it apparently didn't mean anything as the conversation kept going for centuries onward; and nobody apparently took notice.
-CryptoLutheran
The council specifically set out to deal with the Christological questions raised by Arius, namely over whether the Son was homousian, homoiusian, or heterousian with the Father. With the council declaring the Son homousian with the Father, and therefore "God of God" "begotten, not made", etc.
The Trinity itself wasn't the issue, it was the relationship of the Son with the Father.
And like all councils, before and since, it also set down a number of canons, such as that bishops shouldn't live with unmarried women with which they have no blood relation with.
Apart from these, it chose to favor the majority position on the calculation of Pascha at a time when the Quartodeciman position was already all but dead; thus establishing a universal method of calculating the Paschal Feast.
Having said all that, only for the sake of being very nitpicky, the question of the Biblical Canon didn't even come up during the gathering at Nicea. No mention can be found in the official documents, and as such is an old wife's tail without credibility.
There were councils that did talk about the Canon, there was a regional council in Carthage, and another in Laodicea, both within the 4th century. But these were regional synods, not ecumenical and thus not universally binding. Besides, these hardly settled the issue, as canonicity continued to be an open question for centuries after; as can be seen by looking at 4th and 5th century biblical codices such as Sinaiticus, or looking at the continued controversy over the Apocalypse of St. John that was still going on in the 7th century, or even seeing that when John Wycliffe in the 14th century translating the Vulgate into English retained the spurious Epistle to the Laodiceans in his translation as it was in the Vulgate at the time.
The one that should be clear is this: Even if Nicea did say anything about the Biblical Canon, it apparently didn't mean anything as the conversation kept going for centuries onward; and nobody apparently took notice.
-CryptoLutheran
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Could we return to the original questions and stop discussing what the council of Nicea did or didn't cover please.
My point is this- why should we trust that a group of men got to decide what would and would not be included in the church tradition? How do they have the authority to determine what is "inspired" by God and what is not?
I don't care which council or meeting you think did it- I'm just looking for discussion on authority and whether or not we've lost a great deal of information and history by trusting the decisions those men made during the early church.
My point is this- why should we trust that a group of men got to decide what would and would not be included in the church tradition? How do they have the authority to determine what is "inspired" by God and what is not?
I don't care which council or meeting you think did it- I'm just looking for discussion on authority and whether or not we've lost a great deal of information and history by trusting the decisions those men made during the early church.
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The answers you get will no doubt depend on how that person understands Nicaea; I've always found Rowan Williams' Why Study the Past? helpful
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I'll go back to my original questions, then, to help set a framework of discussion.
As you say this, what do you know about how the canon was determined?
For instance do you know the role played by the Marcion in the 2nd century?
And what do you believe about the action and role of the Holy Spirit in determining "what the truth of God is and is not?"
I suspect you have opinions...why not come right out with them?
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ViaCrucis
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Faith. We trust in God's Providence, that His Church has rightly preserved and retained what it has been entrusted from the beginning, and that Scripture is holy and inspired; that what we have as Old and New Testament is faithfully the word of God, the faithful and inspired witness of Jesus Christ to and for His Church.
Such a thing can not be verified empirically, as such a thing is a matter of implicit faith.
-CryptoLutheran
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ViaCrucis said:
I see your point but I am reminded that our faith is in God not in the judgment or understandings of man. Even the "Old Testament"- the Jewish traditions- at the time of Christ have been altered. We are missing texts that helped to create the Jewish state that Jesus was preaching to! How can we possibly understand the message without having all the information?
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Knee V
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The Church never bothered herself with determining which books were "inspired Scripture". The point in collecting a canon of books (i.e., the New Testament) was to determine which books were the genuine written legacy of the Apostle that they might read those, and only those, in the churches. They had several criteria for determining which were genuinely Apostolic, e.g.: Was the writing more or less universally received by the whole Church? Does the writing jive with the teachings that the Church has received from the Apostles?
There were (at least) two main reasons why the Church bothered to make this determination in the first place: to determine which writings should be read in the churches; to make sure that spurious/non-apostolic books were not being read in the churches, and to sift out those books. There were many books that were forgeries that had begun to circulate, all claiming apostolic authorship. But if those books were truly written by the Apostles, then why would they only be received locally and not universally across the entire church? And if those books were truly written by the Apostles, then why would they contain such bizarre teachings that conflicted with the teachings that the Church had received from the Apostles, passed down to each new generation?
The idea of "the Bible" or "what is or is not inspired Word" was not something that was part of the discussion back then, nor would that kind of idea have entered their minds. They were simply filtering out non-Apostolic works so that only those that were genuinely Apostolic could be read in the churches.
There were (at least) two main reasons why the Church bothered to make this determination in the first place: to determine which writings should be read in the churches; to make sure that spurious/non-apostolic books were not being read in the churches, and to sift out those books. There were many books that were forgeries that had begun to circulate, all claiming apostolic authorship. But if those books were truly written by the Apostles, then why would they only be received locally and not universally across the entire church? And if those books were truly written by the Apostles, then why would they contain such bizarre teachings that conflicted with the teachings that the Church had received from the Apostles, passed down to each new generation?
The idea of "the Bible" or "what is or is not inspired Word" was not something that was part of the discussion back then, nor would that kind of idea have entered their minds. They were simply filtering out non-Apostolic works so that only those that were genuinely Apostolic could be read in the churches.
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Nicea or not, there wasn't any specific council that decided upon the canon. The 4 Gospels and Paul's letters were accepted from the beginning. Others were fairly widely accepted. A few things, such as the Revelation took longer for everyone to agree upon.
The major criterion used seems to have that the book was in some sense "apostolic." Not that it was always written directly by an apostle, but had their authority.
Aside from the Gospels, which were included for obvious reasons (they're the main primary source evidence for Jesus' teachings), the letters included were taken to have been written by apostles, with Paul considered an apostle.
As far as I can tell, there's no real argument on the Gospels. The canonical gospels seem to be the only ones giving Jesus' life and teachings from the next generation or two. There are lots of other "gospels," but they're later and tend to have weirder ideas. A few people argue that Thomas is from the same period. If the church as a whole ended upon concluding that its authors had as good information as the authors of the 4 gospels, some of us would also consider it canonical. But I don't believe that's the case.
The letters suffer from the problem of pseudonymy in the 1st Cent. It's hard to know whether the early church was right in their attributions. There are about 7 letters by Paul accepted by most everyone as genuine. About the other letters (Pauline and not) there are arguments of varying severity. Fortunately Paul's undisputed letters are the most important for doctrine. I would be wary of establishing anything important that only appeared in 2 Peter, for example.
Those who believe in inerrancy have a different problem than I do. They need to show that exactly the current canon is inspired by God in a special way. I'm not going to defend that position, because I don't see how you can. I'm more inclined to use sources critically. So one letter more or less doesn't affect my faith.
About the OT it's much harder to evaluate. Because the OT primarily gives the background for Jesus, I'm inclined to accept the same traditional Jewish canon he would have used. He referred to the Law and the Prophets, thus in my opinion effectively accept the then-current canon.
The major criterion used seems to have that the book was in some sense "apostolic." Not that it was always written directly by an apostle, but had their authority.
Aside from the Gospels, which were included for obvious reasons (they're the main primary source evidence for Jesus' teachings), the letters included were taken to have been written by apostles, with Paul considered an apostle.
As far as I can tell, there's no real argument on the Gospels. The canonical gospels seem to be the only ones giving Jesus' life and teachings from the next generation or two. There are lots of other "gospels," but they're later and tend to have weirder ideas. A few people argue that Thomas is from the same period. If the church as a whole ended upon concluding that its authors had as good information as the authors of the 4 gospels, some of us would also consider it canonical. But I don't believe that's the case.
The letters suffer from the problem of pseudonymy in the 1st Cent. It's hard to know whether the early church was right in their attributions. There are about 7 letters by Paul accepted by most everyone as genuine. About the other letters (Pauline and not) there are arguments of varying severity. Fortunately Paul's undisputed letters are the most important for doctrine. I would be wary of establishing anything important that only appeared in 2 Peter, for example.
Those who believe in inerrancy have a different problem than I do. They need to show that exactly the current canon is inspired by God in a special way. I'm not going to defend that position, because I don't see how you can. I'm more inclined to use sources critically. So one letter more or less doesn't affect my faith.
About the OT it's much harder to evaluate. Because the OT primarily gives the background for Jesus, I'm inclined to accept the same traditional Jewish canon he would have used. He referred to the Law and the Prophets, thus in my opinion effectively accept the then-current canon.
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It's interesting to note also the in the Lutheran Confessions (Book of Concord) makes no mention of what books constitute "The Bible"; there is always the possibility that there are other Apostolic manuscripts which may come to light (I believe that there are texts mentioned in Scripture which we do not presently have). The Biblical canon therefore remains open.
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It's interesting to note also the in the Lutheran Confessions (Book of Concord) makes no mention of what books constitute "The Bible"; there is always the possibility that there are other Apostolic manuscripts which may come to light (I believe that there are texts mentioned in Scripture which we do not presently have). The Biblical canon therefore remains open.
Is that actually the case--that because the Bible books are not identified in the Book of Concord, Lutherans officially believe that the Canon is open? This, if true, would also have to be spelled out in the Book of Concord, I'm guessing.
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